Overhead costs and certain causes

It's a familiar story: "Oregon's attorney general, John Kroger, is seeking to shut down a nonprofit organization that awards honorary medals to veterans, saying most of the cash the group raises goes to a commercial telemarketer." The courts have held over and over that it is not illegal for a large percent of funds raised to go to overhead or to a service provider, such as a telemarketing firm. As such, I doubt Oregon has any ground to stand on here, however bad "charities" like this make the rest of the nonprofit sector look.

I wonder, why, though, it seems that these dubious charities always seem to raise funds for veterans or police officers. I've not familiar with any cases like this where the organization in question raised funds for the environment, for example. Certainly, I don't think it's the fault of legitimate charities that work in these areas. Is it because providing relief for these folks is a cause almost everyone can get behind? Is it because there isn't a well-known name-brand charity in this area?

Jobs

Wow, jobs for next fall are already starting to show up. So here goes:

Open-rank tenure-track position at Texas Tech, specializing in community colleges.

Assistant professor at the University of Hawaii.

Non-tenure track assistant position at Michigan State University. State also has open-ranked tenure-track positions open, but these don't seem to be posted (they're on the ASHE listserv).

Research scientist at the University of Illinois, studying graduate student issues.

By the way, I promise to eventually do a round-up of this year's job search. In the meantime, you can read someone else's.

NCLB is failing our children, at least in math

Young American: You guys probably remember Rocky Horror when it first came out in the 70s, right?
[silence]
YA: You're what, 30?
Me: Close. But I don't think my parents were taking me to Rocky Horror at that point.

Endowment shocks have variable effects

Now this is the kind of higher education research I find fascinating: "We find that universities with larger negative endowment shocks are relatively more likely to: (1) reduce support staff (e.g., secretaries) and maintenance, but not administrators; (2) among less selective institutions, reduce expenditures on tenure-system faculty while increasing the average salary of adjuncts/lecturers; (3) make larger cuts to tenure-system faculty and secretarial support when their endowment portfolio is less liquid (i.e. higher allocations to alternative assets such as hedge funds); and (4) among more selective universities, reduce financial aid for students the following Fall and enroll fewer freshmen. We also find that universities increase hiring when there are negative endowment shocks to their peers."

I think it's important in the area of finance to remember that one dollar is not equal to any other dollar. Where it comes from influences how it is spent. (And I don't just say this because I've co-authored a paper on the topic.)

Becoming professional

I had a meeting this morning about two policy papers I'm going to be writing for a higher education group. I'm excited about these papers because they should be interesting (and I think one might be able to generate a peer-reviewed article), but that's not all. I realized this is the first project I've taken on that didn't come out of a class, work for a professor, or my dissertation - the first thing I've done as an independent professional. Woot!